1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle outer handle system wherein one end of a handle main body formed from a synthetic resin and having a hollow grip part is swingably supported in a door outer panel, and an electrode for detecting a change in capacitance is housed within the grip part.
2. Discussion of Relevant Art
It is known to use an outer handle system of a vehicle door to obtain a trigger signal by which a user's intention to open the door is confirmed and an operation to unlock the locked door is carried out, when automatically releasing a locked door in response to identification of a vehicle user by the transmission/reception of a user identification code between a portable transceiver carried by the user and a vehicle transceiver disposed on the vehicle. Such an outer handle system is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 10-308149.
In the known outer handle system, the user's intention to open the door is confirmed based on an increase in the capacitance between ground and an electrode housed within the grip part of a handle main body when the user's hand touches or approaches the grip part, compared with when the grip part is not touched or approached. In the above-mentioned conventional system, since the electrode within the grip has sensitivity on both the inside and the outside of the grip part, the capacitance is increased by direct contact of a human hand with the outside of the grip part or by indirect contact of a human body via clothes, a glove, etc. with the outside of the grip part. As a result, it might be erroneously recognized that the user has the intention of opening the door, and an operation to unlock a locked door might be carried out erroneously.